Advani, Joshi among BJP star campaigners for Bihar polls

New Delhi, Sep 23 (IANS) BJP veterans Lal Krishna Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha are among the star campaigners enlisted by the party to woo voters ahead of the Bihar assembly elections.

Sources said Prime Minister Narendra Modi and union ministers Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Smriti Irani, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Rajiv Pratap Rudy are also on a list of 40 star campaigners that the party submitted to the Election Commission on Tuesday.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and his Jharkhand counterpart Raghubar Das are the only BJP chief ministers on the list. BJP president Amit Shah is also among the star campaigners.

Since the formation of the Modi government at the Centre in May 2014, Advani and Joshi have been sidelined in the BJP and restricted to the party’s Margdarshak Mandal.

In the past, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar accused the BJP of “dumping” party veterans like Advani and Joshi as they didn’t figure in the election posters of the BJP in Bihar soon after the announcement of poll dates.

Shatrughan Sinha, the BJP MP from Patna Sahib, had embarrassed the party by openly criticising party decisions and publicly praising Nitish Kumar.